The Making of City of Heroes
The blog Rock, Paper, Shotgun has been delighting PC gamers since July of this year with spot-on interviews, commentary, and diatribes on everything from FPSes to MMOGs. This week they have up an interview done by journalist Kieron Gillen talking with designer Jack Emmert about City of Heroes. The topic? Nothing less than how the world of Paragon City came to be.
The interview is from back in 2004, so some of the comments are a bit dated, but it's a great look back at the concepts the designers were tossing around all the way back at the game's origin.
One of Jack's most interesting comments is on the desire to get the game's scope as tight as it could be, as early as possible:
"You can only do so much well," Jack insists, "It was just a decision we made in January/February of 2003. We just said that "We really should start focusing on what this game is going to be". We wanted it to be everything, but it wasn't realistic. We'd run into too many issues. We thought it was better to have a really stable, fun game and then add to it. The essence of a superhero is combat, so that's what we did, knowing we could grow the game over time and add more through patches. And to be honest, it's a mistake many MMOs make, is that they try to be everything that Everquest does... forgetting that Everquest wasn't Everquest when it released."
